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July 12, 2013 By Vivek Misra Leave a Comment

How does the Brain Work ?

Following is the summary of First Neurokrish Lecture, which I have attended on 5th July 2013

Dr-Chris-French
Dr. French delivering the lecture. Photo: A Raja Chidamabaram | The Indian Express

Free Will, Moral Action and Consciousness – can we explain these with our present knowledge of brain and mind ? Was the key question during the first Neurokrish Lecture.

While delivering the Neurokrish Lecture 2013 titled “How does Brain Work”, Dr. Chris French, a senior neurologist and epileptologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, discussed basic structures of the brain and how each section controls our daily functions, including motor control, visual processing, auditory processing, sensation, learning, memory and emotions.

“The human brain is perhaps the most complex of organs, boasting between 50-100 billion nerve cells or neurons that constantly interact with each other. These neurons ‘carry’ messages through electrochemical processes; meaning, chemicals in our body (charged sodium, potassium and chloride ions) move in and out of these cells and establish an electrical activity” told Dr. French.

Talking about historical perspective, Dr. French highlighted the path breaking work of Hippocrates, Lucretius, Descartes, Sherrington, Eccles and Popper. While focusing upon basic neurobiology he highlighted Hubel and Wiesel theory of mammalian visual system. Talking about how brain stores/create memory he introduced several theories like Hebb’s rule which focus upon neuronal doctrine, McCulloch theory and Pitts and Hopfield which focued upon memory encoding in networks.

Highlighting the recent advances in neuroscience, which help us in understanding how really our brain work, Dr. French talked about research carried out at cellular level i.e. patch clamping, real time optical imaging, genetic manipulation of animals and optogenetics. While highlighting the imaging research he also showed few examples from Functional MRI (fMRI) and MRI Tractography.

Focusing upon computational neuroscience he highlighted a million dollar project Blue Brain project, which is an attempt to reverse engineer the human brain and recreate it at the cellular level inside a computer simulation. BlueSky Project, which enable the neuroscienctists to directly record electrical signals from the brain with MRI. Finally an interventional model under trial at University of Melbourne -NeuroVista, which is an implant in the brain and have ability to predict a seizure episode.

The lecture was delivered during an open forum themed “Neurodevelopmental Disability – an inter-disciplinary approach” organised by TRIMED and Neurokrish at Hotel Savera. Forum also highlighted the launch of “Growing Brain Lab”  – a learning, aptitude and behaviour program for young people and “Sambodhayathi” an unique integrative medicine SEVA project. The function was presided over by Mr. P. Murari, advisor to FICCI. Event was attended by over 200 medical and allied health professional and families of specially-abled children.

Media Coverage: http://goo.gl/aVNc8

ResearchBlogging.org
Cook MJ, O’Brien TJ, Berkovic SF, Murphy M, Morokoff A, Fabinyi G, D’Souza W, Yerra R, Archer J, Litewka L, Hosking S, Lightfoot P, Ruedebusch V, Sheffield WD, Snyder D, Leyde K, & Himes D (2013). Prediction of seizure likelihood with a long-term, implanted seizure advisory system in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy: a first-in-man study. Lancet neurology, 12 (6), 563-71 PMID: 23642342

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Filed Under: Clinical Neuroscience

Vivek Misra

Clinical Neuroscientist | Founder Uberbrain Research Frontier.
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